Collaboration

General Stanley McChrystal, with Chris Russell, has just published a book entitled "One Mission".  It is a discussion of teams and teamwork and how teams are more effective than individuals because teams bring the power of multiple brains to a task.  But we are sales people, and sales people are loners.  We don't want to involve others because that will effect our sales dollars and maybe our commissions--and bosses will think less of us because we can't close without help.
The facts show that success comes from collaboration--so how do we reconcile our need, as salespeople, to go it alone and the fact that we can be more successful if we collaborate in our efforts?
Fortunately, technology comes to our rescue here.  There are lots of "apps" that allow us to collaborate and still go our ways as independent salespeople.
The hottest new app for collaboration is "Slack" (www.slack.com).  Someone described it as a text messaging system on steroids.
Matt Mansfield, in his Small Business Trends blog states: "Integration is what catapults Slack into a category all its own. The solution enables you to centralize all your notifications, from sales to tech support, social media and more, into one searchable place where your team can discuss and take action on each."
So, instead of scrolling through your text messages to find that note that you sent your sales manager, you use Slack to keep track of all messages on all subjects.
Three things that are very very important--Slack is free for small businesses: Slack is very customizable so that you tailor it to your business; and Slack is available for all platforms--smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops, Android and IOS.
Slack is organized by "Channels", so that you can have a separate Channel for different parts of your business, including Private Channels for management, you can share files, send notifications to your team--all the stuff that is difficult to do with texting.
Check it out.  Collaboration is the secret to future success in sales with the world moving so fast; Slack is a free and easy way to collaborate.  Much better than email, and more effective than texting.